Brave New World?
Written by duckrabbit“Photography has become stagnant and we see the same images over and over again. We need new kinds of images, and a new kind of aesthetic to get the public to care again.” Maggie Steber
The public do care. Or least some of the them.
There is no evidence that they don’t.
Beyond that though I wonder if some photographers are waiting for the impossible, and that’s a new world?
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (8 Comments)
SOMEBODY HAS SAID THAT THE PRODUCT COULD BE THE PROBLEM AND OUT OF TOUCH!
At last. I do think this is changing. I do think people by going through the process of scrutiny outside of the frame, like on blogs are actually stepping back to ask themselves what exactly they are doing and why. All the factors that live and preside outside of the current frame constrained ideology that incentivises ego, self authored genius and the fact that career prospects are enhanced by using shock as the promotional tool to enhance your name as a photojournalist.
Social and economic structures dictate the nature of the product, that is why management is so important in everything we do in life. Weak management structures create weak product but there is so much great stuff out there. The last 3 to 4 posts on duckrabbit show that.
PJ’ists should stop blaming the public for not caring, they just don’t care to be spoken to by the dominant ideology within photojournalism and that is different. I bet the public will respond to the industry if it stripped itself of its baggage because lets face it, even establishment photojournalists see how horrid this industry can be.
The future is bright – really bright mainly because questions are being asked so the answer will eventually come.
‘PJ’ists should stop blaming the public for not caring’
I’m not aware that collectively they do?
The defense of Perpignan shanties was punctuated with accusations of the “public not caring” and blaming celebrity consumer society for being inferior beings for not feeling when confronted with suffering.
That is a strand of thinking that permeates those who do not question their own output but deflect the responsibility for failure on others. Counter transference I believe I have heard it called. Often heard in talks about the future of PJism.
I am no fan of celebrity consumerism but to change the world, you need them on board.
Seems pretty tenuous to base such a broad claim that ‘PJ’ists should stop blaming the public for not caring’.
If I was a PJ I would be pretty pissed off to be tarred with the same brush.
I’m not aware that any weight is given to a PJ who is blaming the public for not caring? Sounds like a stereotype to me.
Fair point duckrabbit – I was making a quick point so must have got lazy.
“PJ’ists should stop blaming the public for not caring” should be replaced by
“Those PJ’ists who are tempted to should not blame the public for not caring”
Will refine in order to have the long worded academic version of the point I wanted to make –
Written only this week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/nov/16/criticism-critics-photography-susie-linfield
“At its best, the passionate intensity and intellectual rigour of Linfield’s writing may convince you that looking away, or not looking at all, is not an option.”
Loads of producers of this kind of work will no doubt shout “You see – it is legitimate”.
It is not an option apparently for audiences to look away at images of suffering and death without context. This is important as defending the right to blast the public with catastrophic images all the time and seeing its inevitable decline will lead to photojournalists who produce that kind of work who see a lack of popularity to say it must be their fault:-
http://www.epuk.org/The-Curve/952/ethics-and-photojournalism
“These are difficult times for journalists and photographers: we live in a celebrity culture controlled by big business and advertisers who have a financial stake in selling things which requires constant banality and revision. George Orwell called it Prolefeed.”
“The industry relies increasingly on (young) freelancers brought up in a PR-soaked, compromised environment armed with digital cameras to cover the world. Cheaply.”
How about an outsider’s view – a PR company:-
http://www.core-marketing.co.uk/2010/08/is-the-world-of-photojournalism-coming-to-an-end-team-core-investigates…/
“It is easy to argue that sadly these celebrity focused stories are taking the emphasis off wider more important events that are happening in the world.”
Look at the comments here:-
http://www.epuk.org/Opinion/961/for-gods-sake-somebody-call-it
“Sad but very true. It’s a reflection of the dumbing down of the majority of the publications that call themselves newspapers or magazines.”
“These days it’s all about ads & celebrities … what a shame.”
I hear this a lot in audience of talks discussing the decline of the industry. They blame instead of evaluate and worst of all, the genre moves closer to thrusting images of explicitness onto the public without testing their levels of ethical consent because someone in an ivory tower thinks explicitness is required to strengthen the moral fortitude of the weak.
Celebrity culture is not going to be matched by PJ’ism in its ability to be popular but the gap can certainly get smaller.
You are quite right to point out the absoluteness of my language in my earlier comment was wrong although I hope this clears up the underlying point I was making. Proves that sensationalism defeats the purpose of intelligent discussion though right!!!!
Good points (as ever)
Not sure that people are less aware of what is going on in the world. Not sure that the public are less interested in photography. A certain presentational style is becoming outdated. Same as ever. The world moves on.
Seems to me that Susie Linfield is making an important point. The problem isn’t the images or the audience, it’s the political context within both operate.
Contrasting the reception on social documentary and reportage photography now, as opposed to, say, the Vietnam War era, she says, “we no longer have the same kind of moral and political framework” that governed our responses to the war photography of the past.
The American response to the Abu Ghraib photos reinforces her point. In essence, most Americans shrugged them off. There was no significant anti-war movement for them to feed into and off of.
This was very different from the response to Nick Ut’s iconic photo of Phan Th? Kim Phúc, the Vietnamese girl who had been burned in a napalm attack.
@John
Surely the problem is in the political context only if:-
1. …there is no problem to discuss in the way images are used and the relatively small impact the industry has on society?
2. …there is nothing wrong with the images (therefore the shooters)?
3. …there is nothing wrong with the audience?
This is interesting as Linfield’s statement that “we no longer have the same kind of moral and political framework” is going to be an easy thing to say because it is so obviously true of pretty much everything social? Time moves on and context always changes – women now have the vote, slavery is now illegal, child labour is now frowned upon etc etc etc.
The internet now informs more people much more effectively than anything before so the impact of work is always going to be different contextually – I agree with that but I worry because if the producers of work believe in Linfield or the journalist who wrote the article, then the path for current shooters can only go one way because turning away from explicitness is “not an option”. That is legitimising some movements in PJ’ism better discussed by the more informed (e.g. Vernaschi and Pulitzer Prize) that I find repulsive. World Press 2010 is littered with irresponsible explicitness and I have now lost faith in a once great institution.
I want to keep that choice to see explicit images death and suffering on my own terms and I would bet that most people would want that for themselves too but that is just my hunch. They will simply ask themselves has anybody else the right to decide for them what they need to see when the web will let me decide for myself?
I find it hard to think there is nothing wrong with this industry so I dismiss 1, and I trust the judgement of audiences over the choices of a single editor so that takes away 3. For me, that leaves only 2.
This is more subtle than I have presented of course so excuse me if I sound too strident in my choice of words yet it seems to me the easiest thing to change first would be the images coming out of the industry?